The Novel As a Reflection Of Its Author Essay

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The novel as a reflection of its author

Although both the epic and the fable are vastly older, the most cultivated narrative genre in modern times is the novel. Its major boost during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries nonetheless has old roots in literature such as the Bible. The epic, the oldest narrative genre, has its origin in the great and heroic poems of antiquity: namely, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The epic is written in verse; the central themes are the same as the interests and ideals of the society in which it arises and the characters become different literary types embodying human immutable qualities such as valor and rage. The novel genre, however, has undergone constant changes; it has become a testing ground for writers who play with the structure of history, the approach of space and time, the characterization of the characters, language and so forth. “If evolution is the softer aspect of transformation, revolution constitutes its radical standpoint” (Andersen, Pedersen, Larsen 15); both evolution and revolution take place as new novels are written every day, defying audiences’ expectations and bringing forth a novel era. In an epic, the author presents legendary facts subjectively -these facts are generally-imaginative elements the author wants to pass as true or based on truth to act as an element of reality. In a novel, there is no generic law through which the reader’s expectations are met -even within a novelistic sub-genre such as a thriller, the author must create a universe where the events in question are obscured in narrative that may be subjective, objective, or a mix of both. The thriller sub-genre, however, has evolved to be as problematic to define as the novel genre itself. The novelistic genre constantly transforms through time and space to provide a discursive heterogeneity, where the many styles of narrative clash from country to writer, some influenced by large-scale events such as war while others are inspired by...